John McLaughlin Williams (born 1957) is a Grammy award-winning American orchestral conductor and violinist.
[1] Williams, who is of African American heritage, was born in Greensboro, North Carolina.
His violin studies were with Dorothy DeLay, conducting with Carl Topilow and composition with Donald Erb and Margaret Brouwer.
He has recorded several CDs for the Naxos Records label, all in their American Classics series, where he has shown a remarkable ability to uncover lost gems by American composers of the first half of the 20th century (such as Henry Hadley and John Alden Carpenter), and bring them vividly to life with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine and the National Radio Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine.
Williams has also served as assistant conductor of the Britt Festival in Oregon.